Amelia willed herself not to color at the memory of her foolish but rather enjoyable liaison with Monsieur Etienne Lamballe, a reverie made more intense by the sheer masculinity and proximity of her handsome patient.
“Not much like your duties at Miss Morgan’s, is it?”
Startled from her meandering thoughts, she handed Thayer the cloth and said briskly, “Do your best with the rest of you, please, while I organize the fresh bandages.”
She battled to keep her eyes on the task of preparing clean strips of cloth while he washed his nether regions. J.D. appeared to have lapsed into moody silence and Amelia wondered suddenly if she wouldn’t be in a similar depressed state if not for the endless routine of nursing duties Angus had insisted upon. After all, J.D. had lost everything in the recent disaster, just as she had. She pointed to the dirty bandages piled on the grass next to his cot.
“Having just witnessed my nursing abilities, I’m sure you’d agree that I’d be far more useful to the recovery effort at my drafting table, than inexpertly poking at the injured, but there you are. I find it most frustrating, but then, it’s all rather out of my hands.” She stuffed the bandages into a knapsack. “Again, please forgive my lack of skill.”
Thayer didn’t respond, and she was annoyed at herself for attempting to engage him in conversation to lift his spirits. Without further comment, she encircled his torso with strips of clean cloth, winding them as tightly as possible without making him wince.
“How
are
you faring, Miss Bradshaw?” he asked suddenly. “Your state of mind, I mean? Do you get down in the dumps—as I do upon occasion?”
She eyed him closely, but he merely gazed at the washrag he was holding.
“I must confess that I do feel blue lately, like everyone else, I suppose,” she admitted. “It’s hard to believe that San Francisco has practically disappeared.”
He set the washrag aside. “I heard it confirmed yesterday that virtually all of Nob Hill was obliterated by the fire.”
A vision of the Bay View’s turrets aflame flashed through her mind as clearly as if she’d witnessed the final conflagration.
“Yes… I heard that too.”
Her voice caught and she ached for the loss of the grandfather who had built such a magnificent hotel on the crown of the hill. The land was still there at least, she thought, and a new hotel could one day take its place, a living monument that the city would rise again from the ashes.
But who owned the land?
An overwhelming urge to ask Thayer what he had seen of her father’s poker hand just before the world turned upside down grew too great to suppress. She reached into her skirt pocket and pulled out the three playing cards she’d retrieved from her father’s fingers amidst the rubble of J.D.’s gambling club.
“My father gave me these on the day of the quake,” she said under her breath.
She watched him intently as his eyes lowered. He stared for a long moment at the ace, queen, and ten of diamonds, the cards’ white backgrounds smudged and soiled.
Thayer’s gaze remained on the cards. “Did he now?” he murmured.
“My father claimed that he’d just drawn the last card in a royal flush when the quake struck. He told me he’d won back ownership of the Bay View Hotel and all it’s contents, fair and square.”
“He said that? Did he tell you he betted the last item in his pocket—his gold watch?”
Amelia felt as if she’d been stabbed.
“He told me he had drawn a royal flush, but he never mentioned he’d bet his watch.”
“He won the watch back one round and didn’t bet it again.”
“Because his luck had turned?” Amelia asked, holding her breath. “He was
winning
when the quake struck?”
Thayer raised his gaze from her hand holding the three cards and winced as soon as he’d shrugged his shoulders.
“I didn’t see what was in your father’s hand, if that’s what you’re asking,” Thayer replied. “I really have no clear idea of anything that happened at the moment the quake hit, Miss Bradshaw.” He paused a second, looking at her steadily. “Do you?”
She recalled the instant at 5:12 a.m., April 18, when she’d tossed her drawing pencil into the tin cup that immediately began dancing along the edge of her drafting table.
Yes… I remember that moment exactly…
Silence fell between them as they locked glances, neither willing to back away from their challenging stares.
“Hey! What about
us,
little angel?” called a grizzled man from a cot nearby. His broken leg had been trussed with a spare board and wrapped in muslin that looked to be as filthy as J.D.’s discarded chest wrappings.
The other patients too, were intently watching their exchange for wont of other amusement.
Suppressing a sigh, Amelia called out, “Your turn next, sir!”
She turned back to her current patient. “There you are, Mr. Thayer,” she managed briskly, reinserting the playing cards into her skirt pocket. “All clean and taped. We won’t be torturing you again for at least another week.”
***
Later that night, a jumble of thoughts disrupted Amelia’s quietude as she got ready for bed. She sat on her cot in her chemise with the three playing cards placed face-up on a crate next to a kerosene lantern. On the morning of the quake, J.D. Thayer had commandeered Angus to come to her rescue, risking his own life and that of his friend. Would he have done that if he knew her father had won the last hand?
Unlikely.
Yet, here was two-thirds of a rare royal flush that her father swore he’d been dealt at the end of an all-night, high-stakes poker contest. Whose version of that fateful card game could she
believe
?
With a troubled frown, she reached to douse the lamp. In the dark, her thoughts drifted aimlessly for a time, and then she found herself thinking that both Thayer and her father initially had cheated death on the day of the earthquake and fire—all because Amelia came looking for the wayward Henry Bradshaw and saved the younger man’s life in the bargain.
J.D.’s dark eyes seemed to peer at her across the gloomy tent’s interior. She had a strange sense that now her path had crossed that of her father’s competitor at a number of dramatic junctures, the fates of Thayer and her were somehow entwined. The clarity of this odd notion shone through the jumble of emotions unleashed by the certain knowledge that she would never see her father or grandfather again. The passing of these two men broke all links with the past, and perhaps even the present.
She sat up in bed. “Nonsense!” she whispered into the night.
She wasn’t linked with anyone now, least of all J.D. Thayer. She had the power of choice and could guide her own destiny from here on out. She, and she alone, would decide the company she kept—and once the emergency was over, it was highly unlikely she’d have any reason to be involved again with the likes of J.D. Thayer.
It’s finished. Finally finished. Let it go… the past… the hotel… it’s impossible ever to know the truth about that night. For sanity’s sake, Amelia… let it go…
Chapter 10
The steam-driven tug
Valiant
bobbed in the churning bay while a crew of stevedores struggled to position the last wooden coffin on the slippery deck. Amelia waited quietly as Dr. Angus McClure and J.D. Thayer completed their duties. Angus pointed to the rows of redwood boxes containing quake victims who had succumbed to everything from pneumonia to dysentery, typhoid, and even gunfight wounds.
“That’s all of ’em in your charge, J.D.,” Dr. McClure declared to Thayer with a nod to the ship’s captain. In the four weeks since the disaster, certain signs of normal life-and-death rituals had begun to reappear, including the transport of bodies to cemeteries other than the makeshift one for civilians at the Presidio. Angus gestured again toward the coffins. “Family members have been notified to come claim ’em on the Oakland side. J.D.’ll just be sure the bodies get matched up correctly.”
Amelia was glad both her father and grandfather were buried in San Francisco’s soil and didn’t have to be transported across the bay en masse like these poor souls.
The captain of the tug nodded. “The undertakers will also be standing by to meet the boat. Got a routine now, they have.” He noted the mantle of pewter clouds hanging low in the sky. “We should make the crossing before the heavy weather rolls in. ’Til the next trip then,” he added, touching his cap while heading for the pilothouse.
“Amelia? You ready?” Angus turned to his former nurse who stood with elbows braced against the boat’s railing. “I’m sorry you have to travel with these silent companions, but it was the only chance to get you back to your aunt. I can’t take leave right now to escort you home, and—”
“Angus, I’ve traveled halfway across the globe on my own. I’ll be fine,” she assured him.
Why did men think a woman was incapable of moving from one place to another without an armed guard?
“Are you sure?”
She forced a smile, wishing Thayer would stop eavesdropping so intently. She summoned a bright smile for the doctor’s benefit.
“Completely sure. And thank you so much, Angus, for securing my travel pass and releasing me from nursing duties. It was such wonderful news to hear Miss Morgan had established her practice in Oakland for the time being. I will be ever so much more useful sitting at my drafting table there, don’t you agree?” She was teasing him, but Angus took no notice.
“That’s what I told the authorities to persuade ’em to grant you the pass. Glad I could help,” he added, looking at her hopefully. “Well, it’s good-bye for now, you two. Hope to see you again, Amelia, when things have righted themselves around here. It may be a while, though. May I write to you?”
Amelia was mildly alarmed by this proposal and, for some reason, highly embarrassed it was uttered in the presence of J.D. Thayer.
She liked Angus McClure. Admired him greatly, in fact, for all he had done to organize the care of the sick and injured. However, there was no point in encouraging him to think that she regarded him as anything more than a “comrade in arms” as he liked to call J.D.
“Oh, I expect you’ll be far too busy to write, but I’m sure we shall see each other again at some point. Be well, Angus.”
She turned to regard J.D. At least his ribs had stopped aching enough for him to make himself useful around the Presidio as a de facto ambulance driver, transporting the injured in and around the encampment in the Winton motorcar whose sides now sported painted red crosses.
Today, however, Thayer had another assignment—that of making sure each body in the coffins was handed over to its rightful next of kin. She took a closer look at him, noting the gaunt slant to his cheekbones and the dark eyes that gazed somberly across the chilly bay. She hoped that the moth-eaten black woolen cape he’d found among the piles of donated clothing at the Presidio decently warded off the damp. Currently, the dashing J.D. Thayer more closely resembled a derelict than Angus’s ad hoc director of a funeral cortege.
“So long, Jamie, my boy,” Angus said to their companion. “Thanks for seeing this cargo arrives safely.”
“Don’t mention it. Thanks for my travel pass as well. I’m doing you a favor, and you’re doing one for me. I need to see those insurance adjusters in Oakland, so I can determine exactly how much they’re
not
going to pay me.”
Angus laughed. “Well, safe journey to you both.”
Amelia nodded her thanks and repaired immediately to the pilothouse where she could keep warm.
J.D. Thayer sat on the corner of one of the coffins in his charge and continued to gaze, unseeing, across the bay.
***
For Amelia, the next days passed in aching sadness. Aunt Margaret had not appeared dockside when the
Valiant
pulled into the Oakland pier. In fact, her aunt, sick with grief over her brother’s passing and the trauma of everything that had gone before, could barely lift her head off the pillow when Amelia first arrived at her aunt’s rented abode. Now that Amelia had heard from her dying father’s own lips the difficult choices forced upon a seven-year-old Margaret Bradshaw—and the guilt suffered by survivors of the Donner Pass tragedy all these years—she found new compassion and patience for her elderly relative who had long tended to become upset by the slightest change of plans.
Thus, it had been Amelia who composed the telegram to her mother in Paris telling of Henry Bradshaw’s death. Amelia who greeted the visitors calling at the bereft inhabitants of Margaret Bradshaw’s bungalow, set out the food they brought, and wrote letters of thanks for the kindnesses shown by their friends and her new neighbors in their time of mourning.
So many other families in the Bay Area had suffered losses in the wake of the San Francisco quake and fire that Amelia suppressed any display of her own grief, especially since circumstances in Oakland were far superior to its sister city.
A few afternoons following Amelia’s return to Oakland, an overseas cable was delivered with word that her mother intended to remain in Paris since time and distance had precluded returning to California for her husband’s last rites. Amelia could only deduce from the final four lines of the communication that financial help was unlikely to be forthcoming from Victoria.
C
OSTS IN
P
ARIS OUTRAGEOUS—STOP—
A
SSUME
M
ORGAN’S FIRM NOW THRIVING—STOP—
N
EED FUNDS MYSELF FOR PAINTING CLASSES—STOP—
C
AN YOU PROVIDE?—STOP—
G
RATEFULLY,
M
OTHER
A few days later, Amelia was due to meet with Julia Morgan about possible full-time employment. Having no need to sleep on the drafty service porch any longer, she lay in the same bed that Aunt Margaret had reserved for her father, but in which he had never slept after the loss of the Bay View. Hands behind her head, she stared at the ceiling, fretting about several pressing problems.
It would certainly be considered unseemly for the daughter of a deceased family member to immediately resume employment, but the harsh reality was that she and Aunt Margaret had almost nothing to live on.
Amelia reached for her father’s gold watch on the bedside table and ran her fingers over the tiny gold nuggets on the top of the case, wondering if she would soon be forced to sell it just to put food on their table. The time was just after seven a.m., so she snapped the timepiece shut and hurried to dress and eat breakfast. Twenty minutes later, she set out on foot for Morgan’s temporary offices in the family’s carriage barn less than a mile from Aunt Margaret’s bungalow.
The moment she entered the door, Lacy Fiske jumped up from her typewriting machine. “It’s Amelia! Oh look, everyone! She’s back!”
A group hunched over the drafting boards chorused their greetings, including Ira Hoover, the young architect whom Amelia had barely gotten to know before the quake but found far friendlier than men at L’École des Beaux Arts. Behind the staff, a visitor rose from the small table where he apparently had been conferring with the firm’s founder.
“Hello, Miss Bradshaw. I hope to find you well—or as well as can be expected, given the circumstances.”
J.D. Thayer clearly had paid a visit to a barber in bustling Oakland—the East Bay city, spared by some miracle, of much of the earthquake’s devastating fury. Thayer’s trim black mustache and starched white shirt had done wonders to restore his former air of confidence. His bronze skin had lost its unnatural pallor and his welcoming smile quite dazzled her with what appeared to be genuine warmth.
“I
am
… as well as can be expected,” she echoed him, adding lamely, “…and you?”
“Much better, thank you, now that I’ve spent a few days where there’s hot water and something other than a canvas cot to sleep on.”
For some reason his allusion to life at the Presidio conjured memories of tending to J.D.’s bare chest and the intimacy of her washing his naked back—and
that
thought had the power to flood her cheeks with warmth.
Startled by this involuntary reaction, she swiftly retreated to hang her coat on a peg in a small anteroom at the back of the remodeled barn.
What is wrong with you, Amelia Bradshaw? You are behaving like the biggest ninny in the American West! Just stop it!
She could easily guess the reasons for J.D.’s call on her employer, and that knowledge filled her with dread. The Julia Morgan firm might be asked this very morning to take on the task of rebuilding the Bay View Hotel property.
Which actually might be
her
hotel property.
Amelia was frankly surprised to see Thayer at the Morgan firm. Given her own recent legal battle with him and her pointed conversation about the playing cards she’d found in her father’s hand, she would have supposed he’d have avoided the possibility of rubbing shoulders with her at all costs and selected another firm to rebuild the hotel.
He said he didn’t see what was in Father’s hand, and the other two cards were lost, so he’s confident the Bay View is his…
And besides, she thought with the knowledge of how difficult it was for women to succeed in business, the services of qualified architects in San Francisco had quickly been snapped up, so perhaps Thayer’s last hope to reconstruct a hotel on Taylor and Jackson streets was to employ the firm in less demand than the usual male design practitioners—and therefore less expensive.
Julia pointed to a solitary drafting station devoid of the large sheets of vellum upon which Morgan’s employees made drawings to their leader’s precise specifications.
“Yes, Amelia, we’ve reserved that empty desk for you. I’ll be with you in a minute after I conclude my meeting with Mr. Thayer.”
Reserved for you…
Amelia’s spirits rose a notch at the intimation that Julia had already determined she’d require the services of her junior architect.
Miss Morgan addressed her administrative assistant. “Lacy, show her my new set of sketches for the Mills College library. Amelia, see if you remember those ideas for shelving that you incorporated before the Montgomery Street office was ruined.”
The mere mention of the library drawings and the harrowing experience that had followed her all-night efforts April 18 had a sudden, peculiar effect. Amelia’s heart began to pound and her palms grew clammy.
She felt J.D.’s scrutiny. “Are you quite all right, Miss Bradshaw? You’ve gone quite pale.”
She waved her hand in a small gesture. “Yes. Yes of course. I’m fine.” To Julia she said, “Right away, Miss M. I’ll do my best to recall the drawings that were lost,” remembering at the last second to address Julia by her surname.
Thanks to the earthquake, it would seem she was to be hired full-time without debate—and during regular business hours, thank heavens.
“Are you
sure
you’re all right?” Lacy whispered as their employer and Thayer resumed their conference at a dining table commandeered from the Morgan family home next door. “Your forehead’s perspiring and you look white as a sheet. Here, I’ll get you some water.”
“Thank you.”
Intermittent aftershocks had continued to rattle the Bay Area, and Julia’s casual reference to the disaster brought the horrifying experience rushing back as if it were yesterday. Amelia clutched her glass of water and tried to speak in a normal tone of voice. “Lacy, do you think you can find me some proper drawing pencils? I haven’t a single one.”
“I know. We’ve had to purchase an unholy amount of new supplies—not to mention a new typewriting machine for me that cost a fortune.” Lacy lowered her voice to a whisper so as not to disturb the others. “The firm needs every commission it can get, even if it’s to build a doghouse. We’ve got to pay for the expenses of starting over. But
you
know Julia. She’s very picky about some things and a perfectionist about everything.” She brandished a fistful of drawing implements. “I sent to Chicago for these beauties.”